The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

And you think Dietrich Mateschitz is rich…

Formula 1 is an expensive business but the sport sometimes forgets that there is a staggering amount of money in the world. Forbes magazine does its best to keep up with it all, and for the last 28 years has been producing a list of the world’s richest people, based on what they can discover in published sources. It is by no means an exhaustive list. Many rich people hide their money very successfully. However it is a good indication of the trends. It is worth noting this year that Forbes reckons that there are now 1,645 billionaires. The real number is probably double that. Scarily, you now need $17.3 billion to get into the 50 on the Forbes list.

As usual the United States dominates the list with 492 billionaires, while Europe as a whole boasts 468. There are 444 in the Asia Pacific region. When it comes to individual countries China is now the second ranked country with 152 billionaires, followed by Russia with 111.

The Forbes list is headed this year by Bill Gates of Microsoft, who is reckoned to be worth $76 billion, four more than Mexico’s Slim Family. It is sobering to note that Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz is only 136th on the list, despite a fortune of $9.2 billion, while Bernie Ecclestone is 354th with a fortune estimated at $4.2 billion.

One of the reasons that rich people are so rich is that they do not give away their money, but the list is a good starting point for those trying to raise cash for the sport…

I wonder if I may interest you in this very praiseworthy and worthwhile scheme to secure my release and return to my many charitable works
Kind regards,
Roy Sahara
Cell No 188746206,
Lucknow castle, Faraway.

If people are interested in this subject, I recommend downloading the free Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2013 (Google it) which contains lots of interesting data about sources of wealth, personal interests, territorial spread of wealthy individuals and projected growth in the number of global billionaires in the next five years. There will many more billionaires around soon and therefore plenty of potential stakeholders in F1 and other sports.

Yes, I think it was Rob Walker who said in the 60’s or early 70’s, that if one wants to make a small fortune out of motor racing, one needs to start with a large fortune, as he had! That was when things were cheap compared to today.

I surmise that the name of the game is, Find the rich-guy racing fan, or, Show the rich guy that he’s a fan and didn’t know it.
I once attended a sports-car-club seminar on pitching corporate sponsorship. The speaker mentioned that finding a race fan on the company Board was a major opening to exploit. As he went on, a listener later stood up and said it seemed to him that one should pray there’s not a race-fan on the Board, because he’ll know better than to take the bait. The speaker said that there was some validity to that feeling, and the director-fan will ask the toughest questions, but ultimately, he’s the one who’ll say Yes. Same game: cherchez Le Fan.
I also believe that a reason the rich stay rich is that they’re good at insulating themselves from the legions seeking to ask them for money, for racing cars, frog farms, etc.

That might be a valid approach in lower levels, but I hope that Formula 1 teams would have a more sophisticated approach than please give us money because you’re a fan. Hopefully the marketing / sponsorship section in Formula 1 teams are pitching to potential sponsors what the expected returns are on their investments, i.e. spend x dollars to get your name on the car, and have y people see your name and generate z dollars of revenue, with z being many times larger than x.

As a Gulf resident it always makes me laugh that Prince Alwaleed seems to use the Forbes list for the exact opposite purpose, boasting how wealthy he is. Even though the bulk of his USD20.4bn fortune is made up of Kingdom Holding shares. He even sued Forbes (last year I believe) because he felt Forbes’ estimate was too low! Strange man.

I’ve wondered why don’t companies such as Microsoft (apart from their sponsorship of teams) set about sponsoring motor racing and motor racing events in a big way – like Red Bull or Monster Energy do. Maybe it doesn’t suit their image? Certainly there’s so much money locked up behind those Windows…